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Nominal Roster of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry

http://members.aol.com/jweaver302/CW/2ndvacav.htm

hOPKINS, JOHN:
HOPKINS, BENJAMIN WATKINS:
HOPKINS, JAMES H.:
HOPKINS, JOHN A.:
HOPKINS, JOHN STEPHENS:
HOPKINS, PRICE W.:
HOPKINS, RICHARD PRESTON:

Connie
 

THE FREEDMEN’S BUREAU AND RECONSTRUCTION IN VIRGINIA

The Diary of Marcrus Sterling Hopkins, a Union Officer

edited  by William F. Mugleston

Historians of Reconstruction in Virginia have traditionally focused their
attention on the Southeastern part of the State for Richmond was the
economical and political center of Virginia. Moreover  thousands of newly
freed blacks flocked to Richniond and Petersburg and it was in that area that
the Freedmen’s Bureau and private organizations concerned with
welfare of the freedmen met their greatest challenges. But the rest of
Virginia was also rebuilding a shattered society, and there were similar
problems in politics. economics, and race relations. The diary of Marcus
Sterling Hopkins provides a reavealing glimpse of a rural area during
Reconstruction and a case study of the Freedmen’s Bureau at a rural level.

Born on a farm in 1840 near the little town of Berlin Heights, Ohio,
Hopkins enjoyed a childhood typical of thousands of other northern farm
youths. He received his education at the local public school and at the age of
19 was teaching school himself.
    Shortly after Prcsident Lincoln’s call for 75.000 state militiamen in
April 1861, Hopkins and three of his cousins enlisted in the  7th Ohio
Volunteers Infantry Regiment. After two months he became a quartermaster
sereagnt and by July of the following tear he was a first lieutant. A few
months after enlisting he married Eva Clarantine Clay, a local girl a year or
two younger than himself.

Hopkins went with his unit to Virginia, where it saw combat in 1861 and
1862. In August of the latter year the Seventh Ohio took part in the Battle of
Cedar  Mountain in Culpeper.
Unscathed until then, Hopkins was nearly killed by a muskethall which
shattered his jaw and lodged in his shoulder.

46 The Virginia Magine

He was sent back to Berlin Heights to recuperate and spent the remainder of
the war in garrison duty in Ohio and VIrginia as member of the Veteran Reserve
Corps.
At the end of the war Hopkins ~ ordered to ~Washington, D C.,  accepted duty
as a Freedmen’s Bureau officer in charge of Prince William County, Virginia.
He joined the Bureau less for ideological reasons than’ out of the need for
immediate employrrent after the war. He wanted to farm but his jaw wound had
so weakened his health that he was unab1e to do full-time physical labor and
eventually had to sell his farm near Manassas. which he had purchased shortly
after the war.
Hopkins remained in Prince William County until February of 1867. Then,
following a major reorganization of the Bureau in Virginia. he ~ transferred
further south to Gordonsville as the officer in charge of Orange md Louuisa
counties. On January 1, 1868, he was mustered out of the militar’y as a
brevvet major and became a civilan Bureau officer, the position he held’ until
the end of the year when the Freedmen’s Bureau terminated most of its
activities in Virginia.
After leaving the Freedmen’s Bureau, Hopkins and his wife moved to Washington,
D. C. he studied law at The Columbian College (now George Washington
University) for two years and in 1871 received a bachelor of Law degree. After
four years with the department of Interior, Hopkins resigned in 1875 and for
the next twenty seven years was in private practice as a lawyer and patent
attorney in Washington. He died in Falls Church, Virginia, on March 4, 1914,
age seventv-three, of a paralytic condition attributed to his jaw wound, which
affected his nervous system and locomotion and bothered him increasingly as he
grew older.
Hopkins kept a diarv during 1868 while he was Stationed in Gordonsville.
The remainder of the article is a boring, tedious accounting of a Carpetbagger
during the black days of Reconstruction through the eyes of a person who
probably did not approve of his job or its’ goals.
Hopkins and his wife had no chidren and the names of his parents are not
mentioned.
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